Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Recently, Communications Giant Verizon announced it would end its DEI program.

The move follows other prominent companies that also either downsized or dropped, diversity quota hiring, and forced education.

Something has definitely changed in corporate America.

Now, to be fair, Verizon switched its stance because of a $9.6 billion merger that was on the table.

Other companies, however, announced that they were abandoning their DEI initiatives

even before the Trump administration had forced the hands of companies that were tied to federal funding.

Ironically, many of these companies, including Verizon, established their DEI programs to begin with in response to pressure from previous administration,

something that Senator Tom Cotton described as a dictatorship of woke capital. Pitched as necessary to bring equality for women and ethnic minorities, DEI instead pushed critical theory, transgender ideology, conscience restrictions, and even corporate what was called struggle sessions that look straight out of Orwell books. But it's now clear

that there were very few true believers in DEI and corporate America. Disney, Netflix, Starbucks,

many others were all in until the financial hit. Rather than woke champions, they were really

only committed to remaining on the good side of whoever held the cultural leverage. Now, a big upside for all the rest of us is that so-called Pride Month in June is not

nearly as obnoxious as it was just a few years ago. The whole back and forth should remind

us just how fickle corporate convictions can be, and also how effective social pressure can be. But that means we should

also know that if the price is right, these very same corporate entities who shifted away from

DEI could shift toward them again. Therefore, if this current vibe shift is to last, it cannot just be

about being anti-woke. After all, there are plenty of anti-woke crusaders today who are just as

rootless as the woke are, even embracing things like anti-Semitism and elements of Marxism.

Sometimes the opposite of a bad thing is still a very bad thing. No lasting change has to be built

on what we're collectively for, not just what we're against.

And two years ago, one of the great thinkers of our time, Princeton Law professor Robert P. George,

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